"Epilogue" by Robert Browning

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 3, 2017   Epilogue   Robert Browning

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,    When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned— Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, —Pity me?   Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!    What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel —Being—who?   One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,    Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.   No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time    Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever There as here!"            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   "Epilogue" was published in Asolando: Fancies and Facts (Smith, Elder, & Co., 1890).   Robert Browning was born in 1812 in Camberwell, England. He is the author of Dramatis Personae (Chapman and Hall, 1864) and The Ring and the Book (Smith, Elder & Co., 1868–69). Browning died in 1889. Poetry by Browning   Robert Browning's Poetry (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007) "Lines: 'When the Lamp is Shattered'" by Percy Bysshe Shelley "To Earthward" by Robert Frost "Patience Taught by Nature" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038